Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney announced to his supporters this morning that he will not seek the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination. His reasons are a bit murky; he said that he wanted to “go out on top,” and, currently leading in the polls, feels that he has done that. Whatever. It is a good decision and I applaud him for it. The only times in recent history when one of our major parties »

Mitt Romney is never a dollar short, but he is often a day or more late. This week, he showed that he has not been keeping up with developments in climate science: As he considers a third presidential campaign, Mitt Romney said Wednesday night that one of the country’s biggest challenges is climate change and that global solutions are needed to combat it. “I’m one of those Republicans who thinks »

Clearly Romney and Bush disagree about immigration policy. But the key difference, I think, is this: Mitt Romney is a patrician who lacks the common touch, but wants to show he doesn’t think he’s better than the rest of us. Jeb Bush is a partician who possesses the common touch to some extent, but seems bent on showing his superiority. That’s my takeaway from the former Florida governor’s obnoxious claim »

It looks increasingly likely that Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney will both seek the Republican presidential nomination. Washington Post political reporters Phillip Rucker and Robert Costa discuss the relationship between the two. The first part of their article is the equivalent of a friend telling you, “I like Joe.” The second part of the article is the equivalent of what comes after the friend adds, “but.” As always the second »

Mitt Romney reportedly has told a group of donors in New York that he is considering running for president again next year. With Jeb Bush trying to round up donors, Romney needed to indicate interest, but only if he has some. Clearly, he does. Romney is expected to announce his decision within the next 60 days, according to Spencer Zwick, one his advisers. Having reportedly told the donor group that »

It’s official: the Democrats are divided on their path to 2016. The Washington Post, in front page story has declared it so. The division is already known to anyone who has been paying attention. Steve Hayward has been writing about it for a long time. Pass me some popcorn, Steve. The division, explains the Post, is between pragmatists like Hillary Clinton (just to pick a name) and hardcore ideologues like »

The New York Times today has a long news story (“Energy Bills Send Shivers in New England”) about soaring utility bills in the Northeast, where many people are seeing 100 percent increases in their energy costs over just a few months ago: For October, [John York] had paid $376. For November, with virtually no change in his volume of work and without having turned up the thermostat in his two-room »

The Washington Post reports that, on the whole, wealthy Republican donors are unwilling so far to commit to a candidate for president. According to reporters Matea Gold and Tom Hamburger, the donor class is “wary of fueling the kind of costly and politically damaging battle that dominated the 2012 primaries.” More to the point, it’s unclear at this early juncture which potential candidate it makes the most sense to support. »

Talk of running Mitt Romney again in 2016 has died down in the aftermath of the mid-term election, where so many potential candidates look a lot stronger now, but the last nail in the coffin of a Romney repeat is his connection with Jonathan Gruber. The video below, put together by the Obama campaign in 2012, uses Gruber extensively to attack Romney (which, once again, shows that the White House »

Josh Rogin reports that leaders of Mitt Romney’s 2012 foreign policy brain trust have kept the team together in a secret effort to influence lawmakers and potential 2016 GOP presidential candidates. This operation is called the John Hay Initiative. My first reaction is that I love the name. John Hay is one of the most underrated figures in American history — a brilliant Secretary of State and an outstanding man »

Mitt Romney received much criticism for saying during his 2012 presidential campaign that “corporations are people, my friend.” In the same connection, liberals (though not all) have rallied behind the idea that, by their very nature, corporations cannot hold religious beliefs for purposes of the First Amendment. But Romney was right. Corporations have feelings and emotions — like pride, disappointment, and humility — and they are capable of feeling hurt. »

Of course there is. But our leading politicians all seem to have stepped out of your college dorm. Bill Clinton is the guy who never lost a BS session argument. Ted Cruz is the only guy who never lost an argument to Bill Clinton, but who also set the dorm record for causing eyes to roll. Barack Obama is the guy you could usually defeat in an argument but only »

In October 2012, at the height of the presidential campaign, Mitt Romney sensibly observed that Russia is “our number one geopolitical foe.” The Obama campaign immediately pounced, releasing this attack ad featuring the slow-witted Madeline Albright, which accused Romney of being an out of touch cold warrior: Knowing what we know now, those smug comments can only provoke hollow laughter. One wonders: who did Obama think was our number one »

Yesterday the news broke that Netflix, whose premier political drama at the moment is House of Cards (you may very well think I prefer the British original, but I couldn’t possibly comment), is set to release a documentary about Mitt Romney and his unsuccessful six-year drive for the White House. I’m guessing the film will set off a wave of buyers’ remorse among voters. Romney had his flaws as a »

Remember when it was scandalous if a candidate for major office did not serve up for public scrutiny all of his tax returns going back years? Return with us now to those thrilling days of…2012. For much of that year’s presidential campaign, as Jim Geraghty recalls, Mitt Romney’s tax returns for 2011 and the period before 2010 were treated as a huge pressing issue for the wealthy candidate: Romney’s tax »

As preface to the second half of our conversation with Gabriel Schoenfeld about his e-book A Bad Day on the Romney Campaign, here’s one passage of the concluding chapter about how the GOP establishment is reflecting on the aftermath of Romney’s loss that is worth taking on board: The RNC’s quest for better data so that it can have better “messaging” is not a mechanism for leadership. It is a »

We ran a short excerpt here a couple of weeks ago from Gabriel Schoenfeld about his new ebook, A Bad Day on the Romney Campaign: An Insider’s Account, which you can get on Kindle for just $2.99, but we thought it worth following up with Power Line’s first ever video chat. (More of these to come as we get better at it.) Gabe’s book is wonderfully compact; you can read »